Virgin Fixed Family Ticket

[JBuchananGB]

I was just organising travel for my wife to go to London, collect granddaughter and come back same day. I used trainsplit as a starting position, and got some good clues, including splitting advance ticket from Liverpool to London at Stafford. For the return journey, I added the child, but didn't remove the Senior railcard, and ticketsplit threw me up a warning, saying order separately and combine in basket at the end.

I didn't want to do that, so I went to the Virgin web site, and did the same, i.e. London to Liverpool for one adult (senior rail card) and one child. That's when I discovered the Fixed Family Single. Never heard of it before. So I ordered the whole round trip through Virgin including the outbound ticket split at Stafford, a total of five tickets in all.

Afterwards I went back to trainsplit to whether it knew about this fare, and it does, but only if you request one adult and 1 child without railcards.

As I live in Merseyrail territory (no TOD facilities), I have requested the whole bundle to be posted first class at no extra charge.

 

[yorkie]

Afterwards I went back to trainsplit to whether it knew about this fare, and it does, but only if you request one adult and 1 child without railcards.

Do you have any screenshots of this? any example itineraries (date/time)? Was this Liverpool to London or to/from Stafford?

Virgin say the following regarding this product:

Fixed price for the whole family
Families come in all shapes and sizes. That’s why our family tickets cover any sized family from 1 adult & 1 child, all the way up to 2 adults & 4 children.

The singles appear to be booked train only, while the returns are fixed in the outward direction only and flexible on the return.

 

[JBuchananGB]

On 26 July I was booking for 8 August. One adult senior railcard holder Birkdale to London, same adult plus one child back from London.
Entered the outbound trip into trainsplit, and was proposed 3-way split:- (i) Anytime Day Single Birkdale to Liverpool (ii) Advance Single Liverpool to Stafford, (iii) Advance Single Stafford to London. Then entered return trip, by adding one child. At this point trainsplit put up the message

Your railcard isn't valid for this combination of adults and children. Please add non-railcard holders as separate journeys into your basket so you can pay for them together.

I decided not to proceed with trainsplit, so I went to Virgin website, and entered the return trip as Euston to Liverpool Lime Street. That's when the Fixed Family Single was offered, even though I had selected that the group included one adult with senior rail card and one child.
Then I used the Virgin web site to book 5 tickets:
(a) Anytime Day return Birkdale to Liverpool 7.32 departure
(b) Advance Single Liverpool to Stafford 8.47 departure
(c) Advance Single Stafford to London
(d) Fixed Family Single (1 adult, 1 child) London to Liverpool 17.33 departure
(e) Off-peak day single CHILD Edge Hill to Birkdale (cheapest fare for child from Liverpool to Birkdale)

On the 8 August the booked train for the Fixed Family Single was cancelled, the passengers arrived in Liverpool 44 minutes later than the scheduled time (on late running 17.07 service), and 50% delay repay has been claimed.